Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America

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Abstract

Although still continuing, surface slip from the 2004 Parkfield earth-quake as measured on alinement arrays appears to be approaching about 30-35 cm between Parkfield and Gold Hill. This includes slip along the main trace and the Southwest Fracture Zone (SWFZ). Slip here was higher in 1966 at about 40 cm. The distribution of 2004 slip appears to have a shape similar to that of the 1966 event, but final slip is expected to be lower in 2004 by about 3-15 cm, even when continuing slip is accounted for. Proportionately, this difference is most notable at the south end at Highway 46, where the 1966 event slip was 13 cm compared to the 2004 slip of 4 cm. Continuous Global Positioning System and creepmeters suggest that significant surface coseismic slip apparently occurred mainly on the SWFZ and perhaps on Middle Mountain (the latter possibly caused by shaking) (Langbein et al., 2005). Creepmeters indicate only minor (<0.2 cm) surface coseismic slip occurred on the main trace between Parkfield and Gold Hill. We infer that 3-6 cm slip accumulated across our arrays in the first 24 hr. At Highway 46, slip appears complete, whereas the remaining sites are expected to take 2-6 years to reach their background creep rates. Following the 1966 event, afterslip at one site persisted as much as 5-10 years. The much longer recurrence intervals between the past two Parkfield earthquakes and the decreasing slip per event may suggest that larger slip deficits are now growing along the Parkfield segment.